Role of a Lifetime

by Wilhelm, Amanda

  Finally he asked, "What did he do to you Holly?"

  She was curled up on her side facing him. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, then looked back at the floor. Then she shut her eyes and prayed for it all to go away. He put his hand gently on her shoulder.

  "Holly? Tell me."

  She pulled herself into a ball even tighter. If it had been possible she would have contracted herself until she disappeared. Kelly took his hand off her shoulder and rested the back of his hand softly on her cheek. She said it.

  "He hit me."

  It was true, of course, he had. Probably a thousand times, more. Holly had done the math. Ten years. One punch a week for ten years was over five hundred. And though it had started with one punch it never was just one punch. Never. And never just once a week. And even when it wasn't a punch, or being thrown up against the wall, or on the floor and kicked, or having things thrown at her, his nasty attitude towards her was always there. Always. He had hid it well when necessary, but Holly always knew it was just under the surface.

  Of course the first time hadn't been the first week. That had been months later. But over the years she figured it averaged out. She was pretty sure a thousand was a fair estimate, if not a low one. Sometimes things would be good for a while and she'd convince herself it was over. That he'd never hit her again. But he always did.

  She had told herself she'd leave a thousand times. More. Ten years times twice a week. Many many more. She had promised herself when she was pregnant with Lia she would leave if he ever did it again. Hated herself when she didn't. Once Lia was born Holly was scared all the time. She couldn't stop worrying, preparing, planning what she would do, just in case, to protect the baby. She had to.

  Then she had gotten pregnant again. Stupid. So freaking stupid. And she was going to leave again. But she didn't. She shouldn't have been in the car that night. When she had regained consciousness in the hospital they had told her husband was dead and she had thought she was dreaming. Then she thought it was a trick he had cooked up. She really did. She was wondering if he was going to walk through the curtain into her area in the ER and laugh at her. Wait until they were alone to tell her how stupid she was.

  Then they told her she had lost the baby and her son was dead. Then she wanted to believe it was a trick. But it hadn't been.

  Lying there on the floor the tears started flowing again, quietly this time. She had buried them three towns away, her husband and her son together, because the undertaker had suggested it and what was she supposed to say? She had never been back. She cried and cried, for the little boy lost because his mother was too spineless to save him. The little boy whose grave never got a flower, or a toy, or even a visit, because he was buried with a monster.

  "Holly," Kelly said, and she listened carefully but all she heard in his voice was concern. "I think we need to get you some help."

  She wanted to scream no at him again but she didn't. Couldn't. There was literally nothing left in her. But she didn't want help. He was dead. She was free. It had taken the sacrifice of her son, but her husband was gone. She didn't need help, or saving. Why couldn't she just be okay? She had no reason not to just be okay. Why couldn't she be?

  With enormous effort she pushed herself up to a seated position. She looked at Kelly. What had she done? To him? To them?

  "Why do I need help?" she said, "He's dead. I...should be fine."

  "You should, but you...aren't. I think you need some help. I think we should get you some help."

  Holly looked at the floor. She should be fine but wasn't. She glanced back to the wall where the pictures used to be. He had told her, over and over again, he would never let her go and he hadn't. Even dead all these years, somehow, he was still controlling her. Tim. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell and back.

  She looked back up at Kelly. His forearms were resting on his legs and as she looked at him he reached out to her with both hands. She expected him to take her hands in his but he didn't. He just held his hands open and waited. She took a deep breath and placed her hands in his. When he squeezed her hands she said it. A small word that meant so very much.

  "Okay."

  Eighteen Months Later

  "I'll settle up now," Kelly said and waved a twenty at the bartender.

  The guy came over, grabbed the money and headed to the register.

  "Wait," the man called as Kelly headed out the front door. Then more faintly, "Okay...thanks."

  Kelly walked the three blocks back to the church quickly, but more because it was cold then from any worry of getting back in time. Once in the car he blasted the heat and turned up the seat warmers. Then he found the football game he had been watching in the bar on the radio and waited.

  He saw the women come out of the church in a group and started to get out of the car automatically, then stopped himself. Kelly hadn't been happy when Holly had told him men weren't allowed at the meetings but he had understood. He had been surprised when she had asked him to wait in the car, as in IN the car. But it wasn't that hard to figure out why, to this particular group of women, his six foot four presence would be pretty intimidating.

  Holly and Sofia came over to the car and again Kelly stayed put. Holly put Timber's carrier in the back seat next to Sofia and buckled it in. Then she came around and hopped in the car next to Kelly. He smiled at her in the dim light and she smiled back, faintly. As much as she thought the meetings were helping her, he knew she also found them exhausting.

  "Can't I hold him?" Sofia asked from the back seat. "He's so soft."

  "No, he needs his seat belt too, we want to keep him safe, don't we?" Holly said.

  "Alright," Sofia grumbled.

  They drove the rest of the way to Sofia's house, well technically Sofia's mother's house, in silence.

  "Thanks Holly, bye Timber," Sofia said as she hopped out of the car.

  Kelly was used to it. The most acknowledgment he had gotten from Sofia had been a muttered "hi" the first time he and Holly had stopped to pick her up. Kelly wasn't offended, if anything it confirmed the fact that men not being allowed at meetings was a good policy. But as Kelly watched Sofia head dejectedly up the walk to the front door he was thinking that if he knew exactly what had happened, or more precisely, been done to her, he wasn't sure he would have been able to stop himself from going after the guy who had done it. There were days, a lot of them, when Kelly knew the only reason he hadn't found Holly's first husband and beaten him to a pulp, or worse, was because the guy was dead going on twenty years.

  "Hey," Holly said putting her hand on his arm, "You okay?"

  "Yeah, I just, never mind."

  "Kelly?"

  It wasn't a question, it was a reminder. The policy, their policy, was if something was bothering one of them it had to be discussed. As soon as possible. For Holly, it was a necessity. As for Kelly's requirement for fulfilling the agreement Holly had decided A- it was only fair and B- it was the right thing to do anyway.

  "I just, I see all those women at the meeting with you and it makes me...angry. Not at you, or them," he added hurriedly, "but it just does."

  "And helpless? Cause you can't do anything about it, right?"

  "Yeah," Kelly admitted.

  "I know," she said, "We should go home though, it's late."

  "Yeah," he said, and put the car in drive.

  He squeezed her hand in his, the ring cutting into his finger. He held onto her hand, savoring the feel of it digging into his skin.

  He had given it to her the first time they had gone surfing under a full moon. Once she had gotten to the point where she could stand up and get a decent ride almost every time she tried she had been hooked. These days when they were in California it was Holly who checked the tide charts obsessively and dragged him out of bed early mornings to see if the surf was good.

  He had waited several months before even suggesting going out in the moonlight but when he had, he was confident she was ready. When they took a break they had grabbed some tacos fr
om the stand and when they were done eating he had asked her. She had hesitated before answering and Kelly had waited silently while she considered it, hiding the dread and panic that were quickly filling him up.

  "I want to marry you Kelly, I really do, but the thing is," the tears had started then, "I don't think I'm ever going to be better, not really, not a hundred percent."

  He had been so relieved that that was what she was worried about it had been all he could do not to laugh at her. So he kissed her.

  Then he told her, "I want you. I would love for you to get better, for real, hundred percent better, for the rest of your life. That would be great. For you. For me, it doesn't matter. Better or worse." Then he had kissed her again and slipped the ring on her finger.

  Now he looked over at her and brought her hand up to his mouth, kissing the back of it. She smiled at him and looked back out the front of the car. He glanced up at the road, saw it was clear and looked back at her. Suddenly her expression changed.

  "Kelly!"

  Confused he looked back at the road and saw the truck. There was a stop sign there, he was sure of it, but the truck hadn't stopped or even slowed down.

  "Jesus, fuck!" he yelled as he slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel to the left, hard.

  The truck stopped and Kelly managed to swerve around it and stay on the road. Thank god there hadn't been anybody coming in the opposite direction.

  "Holy crap, you okay," he asked Holly, but he was looking back out the rear windshield of the car. He saw the truck peel out and disappear out of sight. "Jesus, you kidding me, he can't even stick around, what a freaking piece of-Holly?"

  Kelly turned back to her. She was gripping the dashboard, or trying to.

  "Hey," he said, and quickly pulled over to the side of the road, and put the vehicle in park. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes," she said and he knew she wasn't. It was in her voice, and her unnaturally still hands and, well, just in everything. The almost accident had triggered her. Of course it had. Fuck.

  "Let's go home, okay," he told her.

  "Yeah," she said quietly.

  He drove home as fast as he dared, very carefully. At the house he paused, confused, while she got Timber out of the back seat. He had forgotten about the rabbit. Once inside she kicked off her shoes, went into the back room and put the rabbit back in his pen. Kelly followed and watched her, wanting to say something but not knowing what he could say that could make it better, not worse. She needed to let it out and sometimes she didn't like to do that around him, still.

  He watched her disappear around the corner and heard the footsteps that meant she was heading upstairs. Feeling helpless and hating it, Kelly watched Timber dig through his hay pile and jump into his litter box. Kelly looked from Timber's pen to Mercedes'. Mercedes was spread out, flopped, Lia and Holly always called it.

  "Time to go to work," Kelly said and he reached into the pen and grabbed the animal.

  He tried to be quiet as he went up the stairs. Holly was curled up on the bed, her back to the door. He walked around to the other side of the room and the rabbit jumped out of his arms onto the bed. Holly looked up at Kelly, surprised.

  "Do what you need to do, Holly," he told her, "Don't hold it in, especially not for my sake. Please."

  Then he left the room. He knew she was still embarrassed when she couldn't control her emotions. If she could cry or scream and let it out, and if that got her over it, and kept her from getting stuck in a fight or flight state, then that was what he wanted her to do. And if she never got to the point where she could do that in front of him, well that was okay too. But Kelly really wished she would.

  He paused in the hallway when he passed the linen closet. He probably should have grabbed a towel for the bed when he brought Mercedes up. He quickly selected a towel and headed back into the bedroom. He could give it to her and leave. When he came into the room she was shaking. He paused, unsure of what to do. Then she started to cry. The crying turned into howling and Kelly stayed, twisting the towel, tighter and tighter.

  When the howling turned back into crying he chanced it and laid down very carefully on the bed behind her. He wanted to grab her and hold her but he didn't. He just waited. It took a long time. Kelly thought back through the months and months of therapy, to all the things they had learned about PTSD, codependency and anxiety disorders.

  There had been the medication that she hated but the therapist had insisted she stay on. When they had left the office that day Kelly had been unable to wait longer than halfway through the drive home when he blurted out that he thought they needed to find another therapist, fast. Holly had agreed and they had. The new counselor used the weird video with the blocks of light that Kelly couldn't understand at all but Holly insisted it helped, somehow. When they had needed to go back to LA so Kelly could work, they found a therapist out there familiar with EMDR therapy, and set up her appointments before they had flown back.

  She kept crying. He gritted his teeth and waited. Kept thinking. Occasionally even when nothing was bothering her, she cried, frustrated, that it would never get better. But it was getting better. Hard as this was, awful as this was, this was better. She was coping. She was dealing with it.

  The crying turned to sobs and finally died out entirely. Kelly listened to Holly's breathing and could tell she was spent. He was pretty sure she was relieved, though exhausted. How long the fatigue would last varied. The light blocks helped with that too, somehow. Holly sighed and rolled over onto her back, bumping into Kelly.

  "Oh," she said, and he was thrilled to hear how much better she sounded, "You're here."

  "Of course," he said and, reasonably sure it was the right thing to do, gathered her up in his arms and kissed her on the forehead, "Always."

  We hope you enjoyed "Role of a Lifetime". Please search "Amanda Wilhelm" on Amazon to find all of Amanda's books.

  Published in 2015, The Ty and Sara Series

  Book One - So Unexpected

  Book Two - My Angel

  Book Three - Forever is Here

  Sara wasn't looking to meet someone when she booked her family's vacation. She just wanted to give her kids, and herself, a decent Christmas. Away from home. Away from the painful memories of what they had before her husband died.

  Ty hopped a flight out of LA after another fight with his on again, off again girlfriend. All he wanted was a break, then he was more than happy to go back to his routine of working construction during the week and playing with his band on weekends.

  They both knew when they met there was something between them, even if they weren't sure what. When they said goodbye at the airport New Year's Eve and headed for their respective homes, three thousand miles apart, Sara was sure it was the end. She didn't see any other options. Ty, however, was determined to find one.

  Published in 2014, "Mistakes", a stand alone novel.

  Lauri is a stay at home mom who was overwhelmed enough with a three year old and a new baby on the way. When she finds out her husband was cheating on her, she doesn't tell anyone, not even her best friend Alex.

  Alex's marriage isn't perfect either but she's never confided in anyone about it and she's not about to start now.

  Together they go about their everyday lives raising their children. Separately, Lauri attempts to fix her marriage and Alex struggles to decide what to do about hers. Neither realizes their choices are intertwined. Until it's too late.

  Thank you for your support and happy reading.